Category Archives: Cultural

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth

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julie bishop he drew first

From The Age.

A new cartoon sits on the crowded walls of Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris.

The image will be familiar to many Australians who followed the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the satirical magazine in January.

Canberra Times cartoonist David Pope’s stark, confronting “He drew first” pencil sketch, drawn while watching TV reports late at night after the shooting, went viral on social media within hours.

It was instantly, instinctively familiar to the staff at Charlie Hebdo, too.

Any of them could have drawn this, cartoonist and managing editor Riss said on Monday. “This is exactly how we felt and how we feel.”

The sketch, signed and framed, was presented to the staff of Charlie on Monday by foreign minister Julie Bishop, as a gesture of Australia’s sympathy and support.

Our disintegrating cultural traditions

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The moral centre travels. I was taken by a series of interesting comments by Roger on this post on culture bound is culture blind. I find the world looking ever darker because many of the cultural traditions which have held us together until now are disintegrating. This was the first of his comments.

There are two basic philosophical arguments against the cultural relativism you appear to be espousing:

1. It practically denies the existence of truth and the possibility of knowing what is true, yet it presents itself as a truth. Therefore it is an internally incoherent and self-defeating proposition.

2. Despite cultural differences, there is enough empirical evidence for universal moral truths being known across cultures and the religions that inform them to posit a basic common moral ground between different cultures. That is why Christians, for example, find echoes of their moral law in other religions.

One could go on, but, in short, if the oppression of women is morally wrong in Australia it is morally wrong in Iran. What we need to define, though, is what constitutes oppression? It may not necessarily be what hard-line Western feminists conceive as oppression, for example (e.g. a marriage freely entered into).

Conservatism doesn’t ask me to figure out for myself the long-term truths of the answers my society has provided for me before I was born and will live on after me when I am gone. I do not even begin to believe that there is or even could be “empirical evidence for universal moral truths being known across cultures”. I don’t even think there are such moral truths that now exist in our own society between generations. You ask yourself if the same answers to lots of these issues would be given by a representative sample of Australian citizens born in 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990. Now try the same years with migrants. There will be some mash that will be the overall result, but I wouldn’t count on it being coherent nor will it reach any kind of consensus. Sure oppression of women is wrong everywhere, just what counts as “oppression” is also different everywhere. Try arranged marriages for a start and see how much consensus we can find across the world. Let me continue with his additional arguments – which I might add I largely agree with – to see whether there are any cultural factors involved in what he says:

Historically capitalism didn’t arise in a cultural vacuum. There were certain cultural pre-conditions for it to come into being and flourish; to name just a few: property rights, rule of law, freedom of association and free markets, what Hayek referred to as “spontaneous order”, though in truth there was nothing spontaneous about it. These pre-conditions first began to develop in a medieval Europe whose culture was Christian.

How did Christianity inform their development? Deep theological truths which formed the basis of the culture, such as that man is created in the image of God and thus bears certain inalienable rights, that the creation was ontologically distinct from its Creator and was thus a proper subject for study and later manipulation in the service of man’s needs, that time is linear and not cyclical and thus progress is possible and that man’s destiny is not constricted by the fatalism of the gods or the stars but he has a certain measure of free will at least in earthly matters. Eastern cultures certainly achieved some remarkable advances in science and technology, but lacking the order these pre-conditions created they could never give rise to the remarkable boon to humankind that is the capitalist movement of the last 700 years.

For the life of me I cannot see how the cultural bindings of our civilisation have not been crucial. Not everyone will have that same cultural inheritance that we have had as well as other inheritances that might make a difference in why we have achieved our economic success (which is obviously not the only form of success a culture can have). And then there is this:

I should have added that it is a very interesting question as to whether the modern adoption of elements of capitalism by Eastern cultures will lead to profound cultural changes in those cultures. I think we are indeed seeing evidence of such changes in some places. For example, the ability of the newly prosperous Chinese middle class to travel to Western countries as tourists or be educated here must inevitably have some negative impact upon the pact the Chinese Communist Party has made with its people to supply increasingly abundant material goods in exchange for the supine acceptance of their politically oppressive regime.

Another question, this time for the West, is whether once capitalism is completely severed from its ethical roots in Christianity it can continue to be a positive social force or instead becomes an agent of social disorder leading to the moral collapse of society. Democracy and capitalism are historically and culturally yoked together, but democracy can only thrive when the people are virtuous. In short, the very prosperity which capitalism has gifted us with may prove to be our downfall – the welfare culture is an example of this as is the related instability of the family unit.

If Christian ethics matter to our economic success, there is a fantastic amount of cultural inheritance we should recognise. But the world moves on. We are not our parents’ generation, nor that of our grandparents’ nor any other generation going back. A hundred years from now the ethic that will prevail where we happen to be right now is unknown to any of us. But this I can say with certainty, it will be profoundly different from what is found here today in the world in which we live.

The obliteration of inconvenient fact by the media-academic complex

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This shouldn’t be one of those facts that only a handful of people know but there you are. Today is “Jackie Robinson Day”, the anniversary of the day that Jackie Robinson, the first black athlete to play major league baseball in modern times, played his first major league game. There is therefore this story mentioned naturally in only one place that has been put out today: On Jackie Robinson Day, Let’s Remember When He Was Fired From the New York Post for Being Too Republican. Well yes, let us. I encourage you to read the whole article since it takes you back to a world that has gone down the memory hole. Telling you how it ends gives away nothing but sums things up quite well:

Jackie’s retort [on being fired], published at his new home in the New York Amsterdam News in January 1962, is filled with some classic Robinsonian acid:

No one will ever convince me that the Post acted in an honest manner. I believe the simple truth is that they became somewhat alarmed when they realized that I really meant to write what I believed. There is a peculiar parallel between some of our great Northern “liberals” and some of our outstanding Southern liberals.

Some of the people in both classes share the deep-seated convictions that only their convictions can possibly be the right ones. They both inevitably say the same thing: “We know the Negro and what is best for him.”

I care less about the hypocrisy of the left in this instance than I do about how we are now so used to the obliteration of the truth by the media-academic complex that we merely look at such things as just how it is without a sense of real outrage.

I might also mention that I am amazed at how little coverage there is of Lincoln’s assassination on the 150th anniversary of his tragic death.

Culture bound is culture blind

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This is from Tim Blair which he puts under the heading, It all makes perfect sense.

The UN recently decided that Israel was the number one violator of women’s rights in the world today. And then the UN appointed the Islamic Republic of Iran to the executive board of the UN’s Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

I, of course, understand Tim’s point perfectly well. The West set up the United Nations in the 1940s under the assumption it set the standard for the rest of the world. But there were a large number of cultural assumptions built into the creation of that organisation which have been unravelling for quite some time.

Being culture bound is an unfortunate circumstance, although inevitable. The reality is that while we in the West think one way, other people think quite a different way entirely.

At the very minimum we should understand that people from different cultures do not share Western values, nor do they seek to emulate our way of life. They would like the goods and services our economies invent and produce in great abundance, and their political and social elites have more wealth than we can even begin to imagine. But they also have their own values, and these are enduring. Their societies will not become like our societies, not ever.

The Republic of Iran has, without any doubt, strong views on gender equity and the empowerment of women. They just don’t happen to be the same as ours. Why should that difference of opinion exclude their being a member of the Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in the one-nation-one-vote structure of the ironically named United Nations?

Walking into our world from theirs

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I went hunting for my other favourite from the 1920s – Susie is five foot two-ish and has eyes of blue as it happens. But what struck me about this is that they were just as modern as we are, except that they were modern ninety years ago and we are modern ninety years later. How bizarre we will seem ninety years from now is unimaginable, just as we would be to them. What is the reverse of nostalgia, the emotional response of those who lived in the past if they could see us today without having to have lived through the intervening years? There are people still alive who were alive when this was recorded but they have been shaped by the world as it evolved into where we are. But suppose these people should just walk from their world into ours. Certainly amazement, but also with equal certainty, deep and unabiding disgust. The reverse of Woody Allan’s Midnight in Paris but with little likelihood there would be the charm and pleasure in coming forward to a civilisation as morally alien from theirs as ours is.

“There’s no reason for anyone to believe a word he says about anything ever again”

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Mark Steyn:

Last June I said of Bowe Bergdahl that he was “a deserter at best and at worst enemy collaborator”. It took officialdom another ten months to conclude he was a deserter; now they’re figuring it’s time to reveal that he was an enemy collaborator:

A 2009 NCIS investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s activities while in Afghanistan reveal that there is clear evidence Bergdahl was “going over to the other side with a deliberate plan,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night.

So the Government of the United States had reason to believe six years ago that Bergdahl was a traitor. As I asked last year and again only two weeks ago, why, knowing what he knew, did Obama stage that Rose Garden ceremony? Why did Susan Rice tell the American people that Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction”? Why did Obama put his hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness?

Setting aside the propriety of trading five Taliban A-listers for a traitor, it’s impossible to look at that Rose Garden theatre as anything other than a conscious deception of the American people by the President. Why would he do that?

Launching his presidential campaign by channeling Ronald Reagan, Senator Rand Paul called for “strong verification measures” with the Government of Iran. Yeah, that’s a great idea. And if the “strong verification measures” work with the Government of Iran, maybe we could try putting them into place with the Government of the United States. Until President Obama explains the fraudulent ceremony he staged for Bergdahl, there’s no reason for anyone to believe a word he says about anything ever again.

Reading Mark Steyn Online should be compulsory although what you get for it, other than being sick to death of the dishonesty and corruption, I cannot honestly say.

The inventor of 43-man Squamish has died

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I am obviously not alone in remembering 43-man Squamish. Someone else at Powerline also remembers, and has put up his obit as a Powerline Pick. The name of so great a person must not go unmentioned. It was Tom Koch (pronounced coke) who infiltrated my mind now these fifty years ago, never to be forgotten.

And as a true confession, it was exactly what I thought had come to life the first time I saw an Australian rules football game (which has 36 men on the ground at any one time!). In fact, I still think it sometimes even after all these years.

No one who has brought such pleasure into other people’s lives should find their passing unremarked. A genius whose name I now learn for the first time at his death. But a long life and I hope a happy one. And I should also encourage you to read the obit in full since there was more to him than this, great as this one contribution was. This is what he said about his own career which sounds as haphazard as any I have every heard, but there is real truth in this for anyone who must live by writing something else after they have already written everything they already have written up to that time:

“People would say I must have had such a great life doing this,” Mr. Koch once recalled, “people who were engineers, doctors, insurance salesmen or whatever. But it was the kind of work where every morning I would wake up and think, ‘My God, I wonder if I can do it again today.’ There is no way you prepare to do it, or even know how you do it.”

Where does the next inspiration come from? Who knows, but for him, it never seemed to have stopped flowing. He was a true genius, an absolute genius.

Check your privilege

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There are some amongst us who, it seems, are able to do better in life because of the advantages that our in-built and inherited characteristics give us. This is a privilege meter that will determine just how privileged you are based on various characteristics.

If I understand the notion, those who have such privileged positions in life should have whatever advantages we have eroded by wealth transfers along with other encumbrances to our enjoying our privilege. If you are pretty, for example, you should perhaps be prevented from wearing make-up.

The meter conveniently puts the various characteristics in order from the most privileged to the least so you can see what they consider are the dregs of society.

The one category left out is to ask whether you think such a scale is “insane” through to whether you believe it to be “absolutely valid in every detail”. If you are able to understand that the people who take these things seriously are bonkers, you obviously have an advantage in life over those lower down the scale.

[From Tim Blair]

Freedom and apathy – you can have one but you cannot have both

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I’ve seen this before, but people do not seem to remember, or perhaps do not even care.

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: “A democracy is always Temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent Form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until The time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous Gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority Always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally Collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a Dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the Beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 Years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

  • From bondage to spiritual faith;
  • From spiritual faith to great courage;
  • From courage to liberty;
  • From liberty to abundance;
  • From abundance to complacency;
  • From complacency to apathy;
  • From apathy to dependence;
  • From dependence back into bondage.

    • The Obituary follows: “United States of America”, Born 1776, Died 2016

    It doesn’t hurt to read this several times.

    Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election:

    Number of States won by: Obama: 19 Romney: 29
    Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 Romney: 2,427,000
    Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million Romney: 143 million
    Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 Romney: 2.1

    Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low Income tenements and living off various forms of government Welfare…”

    Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the “complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of Democracy, with some forty percent of the nation’s population Already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase..

    If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal’s – and they vote – then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

    If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.

    If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our Freedom.